Using Minikube with Local Docker Images

2018-09-20 — kubernetes, docker, minikube — 1 min read

When developing locally with Minikube, you may want to use locally built Docker images instead of images hosted in a registry. Why push images up to Google's GCR or AWS ECR if you're only testing locally? Thankfully, this is simple with only a few steps.

With Minikube running, eval the docker-env to configure your shell to get started.

1eval $(minikube docker-env)

Build your image.
In the containers specification of your deployment, use the locally built image and specify the imagePullPolicy. Setting this policy to IfNotPresent tells Kubernetes to use a local image preferentially.

1spec:
2  containers:
3    # This is for local use on minikube
4    - image: nginx:20180919
5      name: nginx
6      imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent

Apply the deployment and that's it! You have a locally built image running in Minikube on your machine.